Guy Gets Paid To Wear Peoples' Shirts

Since so many of us provide free advertising to companies by walking around with their logos on our shirts, it was only a matter of time before an entrepreneur decided to build a business out of the phenomenon.

CNBC reports I Wear Your Shirt is possibly the next big thing in guerrilla marketing. The model works like this: A guy named Jason and a few employees sell their chest space to high bidders, appear on iwearyourshirt.com in sponsor garb, then talk up the advertiser through social media. The story says I Wear Your Shirt reaches a relatively miniscule community of 30,000 to 50,000, but still have won contracts from the likes of Nissan and Pizza Hut.

What a neat way to make some money. $800 isn’t a huge payday, especially split in two, but I imagine after this kind of press their pay will be going up.
Beats a cubicle… or sifting through career builder.
Now what can I make money on that I do everyday?

My dad has been saying this for years. Why should I pay $25 to buy a Yankees cap only to advertise it for free? They should either be giving the caps away for free or paying me to wear them.
I hope this guy does well in business, but I won’t expect free caps anytime soon.

You’re not advertising the team, you’re advertising your approval of the team. I wear an Angels cap all the time – I don’t think for one second the team is making any extra money beyond the $20 I paid for the cap. (Which is the point of advertising, to draw in business and make money).

So if the Yankees won the World Series and I happened to be wearing my “cool” Yankees cap out on the street, would the people say nice cap, where did you get it or nice “advertising your approval of the team business” cap, where did you get it?

So the only place this guy will be wearing the shirt is on the website for advertising on a t-shirt? The problem is, this guy’s a nobody. I mean, who’s out there saying “I wonder what t-shirt the advertising shirt guy is wearing”? It’s like saying “I can’t f**king wait to drive to work to see what they put up on that new billboard.

Plus, he looks like a tool.

From the website:

* We use that photo for our
Facebook profiles
* We upload those photos to our
Flickr stream
* We share photos on Twitter

Then:

We all make daily video clips, something
fun and light-hearted on our YouTube channel and Facebook profiles.

Your practice of not wearing logos reminds me of this William Gibson novel centered around advertising. I cannot remember the name though, but the main character after many years in advertising, had developed a strong aversion to logos of any kind. I believe she even had clever ways of removing them.

No Don was just smart enough to figure out the much more profitable and prevalent strategy of making it trendy to splash your name/logo on clothes and then getting the sheeple to pay you for the privilege of doing your advertising for you.

He’s been doing this for a few years, I believe. The first time he tried it, I think he sold 1/1 for $1, 1/2 for $2, thru 12/31 for $356, or something along those lines. I had a friend who bought a day early on in the year for his business.

I’ve always felt that it was silly to pay for a shirt that advertises a brand or product. If you want me to be a walking billboard for your product then at least give the shirt away. I don’t wear anything that is a large advertisement for a product (ignoring labels and small logos), except for concert shirts. Yeah, I know it’s still advertising but at least it’s a product that I like.

Does the advertiser get a discount if the employee wearing the shirt is ‘undesirable’ in some way (unattractive, a total ‘a$$’, etc)…..or perhaps having some total model (especially women) bring the price up to a premium charge……

This is pretty much an extension of the flat poster board that people used to wear, or the spinning, arrow signs you see on corners. These guys just figured out how to get paid without doing as much work, or looking as akward…..

I work in Promotional Marketing. If anyone wants to pay me to wear their shirt go ahead. But I get paid at least $20 an hour to do promotions for companies for a living and I have to wear their shirts..lol